Man United U21s 4 Newcastle U21s 2

Two days after Newcastle's first team went down to a defeat at Manchester United despite a battling performance, the Magpies' under-21 side suffered the same fate as they twice came from behind at Moss Lane only to eventually lose 4-2.

But Reserve Team Coach Willie Donachie was full of praise for his side, who played some excellent football and kept on going until the very end. Marcus Maddison cancelled out Federico Macheda's opener before Bradden Inman levelled again following Davide Petrucci's strike before Macheda's second and a late goal from Angelo Henriquez proved decisive.

"It wasn't really a fair result," said Donachie, who saw JJ Hooper, Adam Campbell, Romain Amalfitano and Mehdi Abeid all have chances at the home of non-league Altrincham against a Red Devils side who maintained their 100 per cent start to the campaign with their victory.

"On the whole it was a really good performance and it was disappointing to lose 4-2. But the last couple of times we've played Manchester United we've been well beaten and if we had been a little bit stronger defensively we could have beaten them.

"We had two or three chances to score more goals and had a lot of chances, so it was a good performance."

Petrucci teed up Macheda to put the Reds ahead on 14 minutes but Maddison - who celebrated his 19th birthday two days earlier - ran onto Inman's neat through ball to level with a confident finish.

Macheda set up Petrucci to restore their advantage but back came Newcastle as Inman drove into the box to slot home his sixth goal in five games this term.

The Magpies started the second half on top but were dealt a sucker punch when Macheda sent a diving header past Jak Alnwick and as full-time approached, Henriquez killed the game off.

Donachie said: "Conor (Newton) was in central defence, the first time he's played there, and he was playing against the top team in the division with a Premier League player in Macheda playing up front.

"And in central midfield we had three players - Mehdi, Brad and Romain - who all want to be number tens so that affected us defensively in the centre of the field, but on the ball and in terms of chances we did well, we really did.

"There were some good performances; Marcus took the goal really well, JJ worked hard and did pretty well, Romain was really good, Brad scored a great goal and showed some good touches, and Curtis was good.